David
Bering-
Porter
My work sits at the intersection of Black studies, media theory, and critical technology studies — tracing how colonial and plantation logics of labor extraction persist in contemporary AI platforms, synthetic data pipelines, and the undead economies of digital capitalism.
Undead Labor: Capitalism’s Zombie Workers
University of Minnesota PressTraces zombie figures from Haitian revolutionary culture through contemporary automation discourse, reading undead labor as a recurring symptom of capitalist extraction.
Digital Doppelgänger: The Second Life of Living Labor
Second ProjectExamines AI systems that replicate human behaviors — voice clones, synthetic likenesses, behavioral models — as a new frontier in the expropriation of living labor.
“Data as Symbolic Form: Datafication and the Imaginary Media of W. E. B. Du Bois”
“A Philosophy of Refraction: Vilém Flusser’s Speculative Biology and the Study of Paramedia”
“The automaton in all of us: GIFs, cinemagraphs, and the films of Martin Arnold”
Paranoid Aesthetics
A theory of suspicion, simulation, and the aesthetics of the conspiratorial real — engaging Baudrillard, Steyerl, Latour, and Lynch.
Possession, Control, and Liberation
LCST 4250Explores possession on a spectrum of phenomenological experience in which the self loses itself — from art, religion, and anthropology to politics and media, with regular screenings ranging from horror films to experimental media.
Digital Media and Race
LCST 2784Starting from the notion that race functions as a technology in modern culture, explores the many intersections of race and digital technology.
Previously taught: Spring 2017, Fall 2020, Spring 2022Visuality and Data
LCST 4527 / NMDS 5459Looks at data visualizations as an object of study, exploring the ways that visual culture and information culture come together in a unique form of representation. Taught jointly with the School of Media Studies as a graduate seminar.
Previously taught: Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2023Generative Media and Artificial Intelligence: Digital Theories of Autonomy and Alienation
LCST 4044 / NMDS 5458An exploration of generative media beginning with artificial neural networks and moving into speculations about AI. Taught as a graduate/undergraduate seminar.
Previously taught: Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021The Zombie: Living and Dead Labor in Modernity
LCST 3230Looks at the zombie from its origins in colonial Haiti to its recent incarnations in TV, movies, and video games.
Previously taught: Spring 2019, Spring 2021
Undead Labor 